Mike Munro's blog

Body and Being Blog by Mike Munro PT

Welcome to Body and Being! This blog is about sharing my experience with applying my knowledge of physiotherapy, yoga, and mindfulness to the condition of being in a body, in other words, to life in general. Here you will find thoughts and articles on various issues to do with health, wellness, science and human experience. I hope you enjoy!

I would like to thank people for their questions about what amount of practice "counts" during the 108 days. Here is what I am thinking for the time parameters. The intention behind 108 days of yoga practice is to create a thread of practice throughout the time period. This is somewhat like a thread of beads on a mala.

Yoga is known for many benefits and you may hear about them all the time. I find it helpful to read information in the science journals that back up some of the claims about the power of yoga. For example, did you know that the Sun Salutation creates the same forces in your bones and joints that are needed for formation of bone? In 2009, a mathematical analysis of the effects of the Sun Salutation on specific joints determined that the movement it creates fulfills all the requirements needed to create stronger bones [1]. It’s nice to have a mathematical model that supports such an idea.

"We need to find the link between our traditions and our present experience of life. Nowness, or the magic of the present moment is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present." ~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, from Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior.

One of my teachers, Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen, once described the attitude we take to mindfulness with the analogy of a glass house. He said sometimes it is as if we think of mindfulness like a glass house in the intersection of a busy street. Can you imagine if your house were made of glass and it were in a busy intersection? Well we wouldn't feel safe in our abode and certainly with everything coming at us, our glass house would be destroyed. So I find that an interesting analogy.

Its important not to get discouraged by how we react to situations on the meditation journey. You may have heard the phrase "That person really knows how to push my buttons!" When we get upset by the words or the presense of another person, it often feels as though they are the ones causing the emotional response. From the meditative point of view, however, we can take a close look at our own minds for the source of the suffering and for the source of freedom from that suffering. Buttons are a good example of this.